Childhood
by Blackwell-Triplets
Summary: This is the Journal, written by a boy in a forgotten village in England. It tells of the attempted suiside of this forsaken boy branded as an outcast. The only people who love him are dead.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I own everything! I own the plot and the character…you don't know how long I have been waiting to say that!

**Lonan Aurëkson**

**The Personal Book**

Found and Posted by Lys

Chapter One 

**February 22, 1601**

Some people start writing in a personal book by saying that they have never had one before and that they are not quite sure how to start. I have had a personal book before, a long time ago. When my father was still alive he used to bring me things from all the places he had been as a soldier. I haven't written much since then, and have forgotten how I started, so I am just going to start with the first thing that enters my head.

Today is my fifteenth birthday, but nobody has really noticed and I really don't care. Today has been an ordinary day at my grandparent's inn, so there really isn't much to notice.

Today, like every other day this month, the inn was empty in the morning, save the few drunkards who were gone too quickly to get home last night. The women, like usual, were busy in the afternoon with cooking. And then there is always Grandma Reganne's meticulous cleaning to be done and Grandpa Attila likes me to help him with the accounting. I have to help them while listening to Grandma Reganne ramble on about the small town we live in, the rumors of distant lands, the newest news of court (which, by the time it gets here, is pretty old), the ways I, as a young man, should behave and all the reasons why she was right on that last argument between her and Grandpa Attila.

Grandpa Attila and Grandma Reganne always fight about their different opinions from how the baker's daughter is behaving with the apprentice boy of the blacksmith's to how late the rain is coming this year. They argue about the inn, me, their friends and relatives, my mother, the past skirmishes, and anything else that crosses their path. It's not that they don't love each other, I don't doubt that for a second, but they are both very headstrong people and have very set views on life. Grandpa Attila is respected in this town and is really named Avithohol, which means "little father", but everyone just calls him Attila, "headstrong". A fitting name, just like my mothers.

My mother's name is Amala, " hopeful". She is quiet despite everything that happens but I was told in one of my grandmother's chattering moods while dusting the mantel in the main room that Amala used to be, let me use the words that Grandma used, "a nice girl with a lot of spunk that always knew what she was about and why she was here on this miserable earth. Amala and Aurek were perfect for one another. He was such a good soldier, your father was, and ready for marriage and a good life with Amala. Just like your great, great uncle Alfred, who married your great aunt Elizabeth, he was also a good soldier, why he was so clever that…." This was, of course, not the end of her discourse on our family history. She doesn't stops once she gets rolling. Now, my mother just sits in a corner weaving, sewing, and sometimes playing her harp for those who come to our little inn. She has no hope left to inspire her. Once in a while, late in the night, I can hear her harp sing her constant lamentation. It was on one of these nights, about a month ago, that I found this personal book.

Grandma would say that the music led me to the book. Grandpa would then contradict her saying that it was the gods working through the music that led me to the book. Why they bother talking about gods I will never know. I say that I stumbled across it while going to get a drink. The music was very beautiful that night, so enthralling that I forgot to look where I was going as I tried to get out of my bedroom down to the well in the middle of our courtyard to get a drink. I tripped over something (half kicking it) and fell flat on my face. I tried to catch myself but I was half asleep and my reflexes weren't working too fast. It was dark and I thought it was the cat that had taken to wandering around the inn at night so I just got my drink, and then went to bed. The next morning I had some extra time so I went to investigate what I had tripped over. Discovering the empty book I took it back to my room, after picking up an extra quill and ink jar on the shelves. I kept them both ready for when I had more time to think of what to do in this new discovery. Paper is usually hard to come by and to find an entire book with nothing in it is a treasure.


	2. Chapter 2

**March 3, 1601**

Like I expected, I will not be able to write in this personal book very often; duty calls. A few relatives from the farms on the outskirts of town came through last night. They come through about once a month to bring rumors of war and sell some of the crops they have grown. They also buy some necessities and take our knickknack possessions that lay around the inn. They try to steal them without making it too obvious. I have never caught them doing so, but it is my hidden guess. They stay the night in one of the many shaggy rooms out back that are over-polished due to Grandma Reganne and my constant cleaning. It isn't normal to keep a place so clean, most don't care.

The inn is like most of the other inn's people describe while coming through. They are strewn here and there along the main traveling roads, usually placed it the scattered villages in this country's fruitless lands. By Grandparents Inn has a main door that comes in from the street and opens up into the common room. Off to the right is the kitchen and the main dinning room, which is more used as a bar now. To the left is a small pathway that leads to the stables. Directly across from the main door, some 30 feet away, is another door that leads to the outside terrace that branches off to four different "place-de-dormir" housing branches, all very compact and small with little hint of its long forgotten dignity and distinction. Which reminds me of what I have been putting off. I have to get a few of these rooms ready for some unimportant guests who are supposed to be coming in tonight.


	3. Chapter 3

**March 8, 1601**

Some people are calling this years the Vekcharna, which means the Dark Times; from what I have seen they have more wisdom than most think. My mother may be named "hopeful" but my name can be directly translated as "doomed to die". I haven't introduced myself yet have I? My name is Lonan Aurëkson. I hate my name. I am now 15 years old, and "looking more like my father everyday" so Grandma says. From what I have seen in the water's reflection (we use all our money from the inn to buy food and have no extra money to buy a bronze mirror), I am not too terrible to look at. My hair is already graying though and I have blue eyes that some would call lifeless.

My face still has child-skin and baby-fat left over from my younger years but is thinning out due to what I suppose is a slight lack of nutrition. My lips are pale and thin, like all the others in my family. One could not identify me by my nose, it is too normal, not big, wide and fat, nor crooked, skinny, or pointed. All in all I am a boy who has had much book learning but no experience. So far I haven't needed any, and I don't plan to do anything that requires it.

Some people would say that I live a sheltered life, but it is of my own free will that I stay indoors. Grandpa Attila often tells me to go outside, breath the fresh air and shake the demons out. But outside it reeks like cow dung, filthy animals and humans, death, and has so many people running around in all different directions not knowing where they are headed that I can't find one open spot of fresh air. Not to mention the danger of it, but I would not be afraid to go, I just don't see the need. If you go outside and you look like you have money all the beggars will crowd around you and almost kill you to get it. I have given up hope, after running away from a mob of beggars the few times Grandpa managed to push me out the door, of finding a tranquil spot just to sit down and breathe. Even as I sit in the stalls now, writing, I haven't found a place free of odors and noise. Smells of horse dung and filthy mules hang around this place day and night. My bedroom offers no comfort either, it is too hot during the daytime and I go to bed with the sun. The kitchen is scorching because of the fire, the activities have been slowly dying down in that room, so slowly that I barely noticed it at first, and just recognized it the other day when I went in to grab some lunch and nothing was sitting out ready to eat and no one was even there.

If I sit in the common room everyone will wonder where I got the paper and pen and question me about what I was writing and what I plan to do with it. Am I writing a letter to a girl, who is she, what family is she from, when the wedding is, if I love her, and so many other useless questions that I would not even get to write anything. It's not just my Grandparents and Mother in the common room, there are also a bunch of neighbors and whoever else wants to come in; that's why its called the _common_ room. Word would spread quickly that I was planning to secretly marry a witch that night in an old graveyard in the middle of the haunted forest of Vekdamon. What is the use of arguing, they are women and don't understand a thing (although I have to say that some men believe anything they hear and love to make up their own stories just as fast as women do). What is the use of arguing when you're going to get caught in one of their traps sooner or later? People twist words and are never considerate of what is really happening. My life story had been to stay quiet and just pay no heed to them and their petty attempts at whatever they are trying to get me to say or do. Because I am so quiet I have been labeled a death-worshiper, a Vekdamon child, but nobody has the guts to come out and hang or burn me. They respect my grandparents too much, Grandpa Attila because of his age and Grandma because of her cooking and healing abilities, so they overlook me.


	4. Chapter 4

**March 15, 1601**

Because I have written more in this personal book then I have ever spoken to any living creature, I might as well tell you the rest of my short past.

Aurek, my father, was a soldier. I would say that he was a brave one but that was just the impression I got as a young boy looking up at his father in wonder. When I try really hard to remember my father all I remember about him is his bravery and his walk. He made men want to follow him, or at least that was how it looked from my perspective. I didn't really care much about war then, and I don't now. I don't even remember whom we were fighting against though I am sure that my Grandpa would know, but he would probably give me more information than I really care about.

On my seventh birthday a letter came from who knows where summoning Aurek to go to some lord's house. Aurek left all dressed up in a uniform the hue of black, no, I think it was a dark blue. He had a sword in his belt with a couple of clumsy knives sticking out here and there, to me he looked high and noble like one of the great kings of the past. Aurek laughed and rumbled my hair, and then he left. We waited two years till news came of him and the company he went with. One of my father's friends, Amiel, came to tell us the grave news. Aurek had died of a mysterious disease from the south. This disease killed over half of his section in the army. Around two thousand men died from the disease alone, it was very contagious. Two weeks later Amiel also died from the disease. His wife, Cassidy, and all his children along with everyone else who went to welcome home the returned company died in the following months.

Mother and Grandmother cried. My will to live was eradicated, seeing how life is pointless and everyone dies some day. I didn't care anymore when people died; people always die. Grandpa Attila stopped going to meetings, against his will, Grandma Reganne didn't want to lose him also.


	5. Chapter 5

**March 21, 1601**

Grandpa Attila died very quietly yesterday some time during the night. I guess that despite all of Grandma's worrying he still died. I used to love him very dearly until love was stamped out of my life. It used to be all right to say that a man loved another man. But these days people twist your words around to make it sound like something that you didn't even say in order to get you in trouble or just to 'have fun' or 'joke around'. I think it's childish, but what do I know about the world? I am only a boy who doesn't like to socialize.

There is a lot of talk about how Grandpa died; some say that Grandma Reganne choked him to death in his sleep. I know she didn't do this but there have been some people who enjoy making a big deal over that assumption. Of course there was the usual talk that he was poisoned; everyone has been fond of that one for years, but it never has happened. Some old man, who knew grandpa well, said that he died because of old age. But nobody listened to him and when the old man said it louder he was told to shut up. Nobody usually cares when a person dies, but when Grandpa Attila didn't write his will and didn't assign a new owner before he died, there is a lot of discussion on who will take over as the new owner. I was the only grandchild, but as a wallflower I am not going to be chosen to take care of "important issues". I guess it doesn't matter that I was doing most of the accounts for grandpa and know how to efficiently run the Inn that has been my home for my entire life. No, I am not worthy in their eyes to have the job of caretaker or new owner. Who cares if they get it all sorted out; who gets what and what killed Grandpa. Why should anyone care what the future holds? We are all going to die anyways.


	6. Chapter 6

**April 14, 1601**

Beginning the sixteenth century was supposed to be the end of the world because the number sixteen is always supposed to be unlucky. Well, it isn't, but it may as well have been. I wouldn't mind the world ending right now. I still have my mother to take care of, so my conscience says, but what love has she shown me in these past six years? I am not quite sure what it is that makes me so…how did Grandma put it? Depressing. I am trying to be a good boy, I don't know what effect it will have, and I am trying to ignore all my thoughts save the one tiny hope that people think that the world will get better some day. Sometimes I really think that I am the wizard that they all say I am. Didn't I mention that? I can do weird things. It scares some people in the village; I guess that is part of the reason that I never go outside. The other boys don't like me.

As for the end of the world, the Christians in this small town were all saying that their God was going to come back when the year 1200 came. But it is 1201 and all those Christians are still walking the face of this earth.


	7. Chapter 7

**April 17, 1601**

They decided on a new owner for the inn. Brackard, a dark figure that has a nose like a raven's beak and sounds like one too. He has taken mother for himself and sent me out on the street because I was useless. An anti-witch mob had Grandma Reganne burned for killing Grandpa Attila, which is a lie. Now I am a beggar, sitting in a deserted filthy alley, a beggar, like half the population in this miserable city. I may as well die of starvation, beggars get no sympathy and I have no unique theft techniques in order to stay alive. I was not one of those boys who played with sticks and stones, fighting and wrestling to get respect and to show that I was the greatest, stealing from the bakery shops and gloating over my prizes.

Tomorrow I am going to find a way out of this city, it can't go on forever and I did manage to pick up a couple of bronze pieces while being kicked out the main door of the inn onto the street by a few of Brackard's friends. I had already spent one bronze coin for bread just to keep me alive these past few weeks. I have two more left. I already had my personal book and pen (and ink-well) in my front pocket. That is how I left; now I am a dying homeless beggar. These are the Dark Times. I have nothing to do but sleep, write, and walk around doing absolutely nothing. It would sound like fun if I had enough food with me, I can find water easily enough in the troughs scattered here and there. It is perpetually raining, the worst trouble I have had is trying to keep this book dry.

Tomorrow I will leave down the west road.


	8. Chapter 8

**April 20, 1601**

The sun's light is quickly fading; I am not on a country road, at least I don't think that I am. It doesn't look like the happy countryside that I had imagined. To describe exactly where I am, I am sitting on a patch of burned grass beside a used rocky road that is wearing through my old sandals. My sandals would be gone by now if I had gone up into the mountains surrounding the path. These mountains looked so beautiful and majestic from faraway at the inn. Up close they are very unfamiliar, all burned black and covered with razor sharp rocks from the size of pebbles to huge boulders that would have a tough time fitting in the Inn. There are a few bare trees along the roots of the mountains, which give cover against the strong wind that has blown in from the east. The wind has pushed me on my journey and kept me moving westward towards nothing that I know of.

It is almost night now. I can hear the wolves howl in the distance, they never sounded that hungry when I listened to them back at the Inn. They must be the dreaded werewolves that are known to prowl these hills on full moons. It isn't a full moon tonight though.

Ravens are all over this barren land, one was daring enough to swoop down as I was walking in the poring rain and peck me on the top of my head. I didn't even know that birds flew when it was raining; the birds I know of always took cover so that their wings didn't get too wet.


	9. Chapter 9

**April 27, 1601**

I am hungry; the growling in my belly is now enormous. I have already eaten all the bread I got from the baker and the only water in this place is the rain that falls. No puddles are made from the rain; the ground soaks it up as fast as it falls. The ground here is like an empty pot that is never full. The earth here is like a hungry wolf that is never satisfied. I am like a little boy that is never happy.


	10. Chapter 10

**April 28, 1601**

I spent my last two coins on a loaf of bread from a passing merchant. I was cheated of my money but I either had to buy the bread or died from starvation. I didn't like the look of that merchant; he was dark like Brainard and had a dominating air about him. He seemed to think that I was some type of beggar.

It is nice not having any place to hurry off to. I can stop whenever I want and go anywhere that I want to. Soon I will turn off this wretched path and go somewhere without a road. I have no more money, and no more will to live. I could lay down right here and die if I wanted to. But, something is pressing me onwards, pressing me to keep moving before it is too late. I said that it is nice not having anywhere specific to go, but I do think that I am going somewhere, even if I know not what or where that somewhere is. Also I do not think that it would be appropriate for the son of a soldier to die in the middle of an open road.


	11. Chapter 11

**April 30, 1601**

I went off the road today and followed nothing, roaming through the bare trees heading south. The same direction my father went a long time ago. Though, he did not head down the west road before he went south but the east road. I had wandered for a while slowly climbing up one of the rocky mountains.

I am now sitting on a flat ledge where it is very clear to me why I was pushed to go on. In the distance I see heaven, or a replica of it here on earth. It is a valley, a green, untouched valley with what looks like a lake in the middle of it. I hope I am not hallucinating. Tomorrow I will go down there and tonight I will sleep, well aware of the possibilities of tomorrow.


	12. Chapter 12

2

**May 1, 1601**

I have climbed down into the untouched heaven. The sun was too hot for my back so I am now seated under a young, tender, green oak tree. It is a small valley with rich thick grass and scattered patches of gorgeous, colorful wildflowers. It is exactly how I imagined the Elysium Fields as a boy. All I need now is a horse for everything to be complete. The air is clean and fresh, this place is untouched by time, and the dirty, rocky mountains surrounding it keep it hidden. Anyone could love it here, even if there is no food.

There is a lake in the middle of the valley, a perfect oval shape of clear sparkling water reflecting the golden rays of the sun. I'm sounding just like a poet! It is very inviting, if only I knew how to swim.

It is now noonday and here is where I have decided to leave this hideous, reeking world. The ink for my quill is almost gone, so now is perfect. This is the last time I will write in this personal book because I now have a better idea. I know that as I dive into the beautiful lake it will be peaceful. Anyone who comes here can read and claim this personal book of Lonan Aurekson, it will stay here for right now and I will join a world unknown to most. I will gladly turn away from here unlamented by anyone. But I am not sad to leave this valley, for it is not part of this world, nor is it apart of the unknown one. It is only a doorway from one to another. But I will have to go to come back; the water will just be the door that experts have been searching for years. It is the sacred door into Elysium, this valley, but one thing will be changed when I return. This valley will have people in it. I am leaving to join my father and my grandparents and the rest of the brave soldiers who ever lived.

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